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So I finished my fourth NaNoWriMo book draft last night. This makes four out of four times I've attempted NNWM and won. The first was to prove to myself I could be a writer, the second was to help me write dialogue, the third was massively worldbuildy and showed me I could do first-person, and now I sit here on the fourth. Each time I do this, my writing permanently goes up in quality and skill, even if the drafts aren't really publishable book material in these forms now, they show my thought process and where I get my ideas from and lots of data and characterization I can pull form. You can read any of them here.
This year's was done in 19 days (with a few days of break here and there) making an average of 2658.5 words per update. Every year it gets easier and faster.
This one though feels the most pivotal out of all of them.
During this time, I worked on developing a character I had original decided to use as a porn heroine to make money with. Her name is Lady Siofra Aine Whelan and she's a fantasy-Irish lass who loves the ladies and shows no shame. She's devoted to her goddess and exists to show everyone a good, fun time. I thought that a well-done lesbian character in porn was rare and it'd be easiest for me to write. However, as I worked on the porn, I began to realize she was becoming far more than someone who was stripping to make me money. I wanted to get to know her better, so I did a novel about her for NaNoWriMo without sex scenes just to see how she would act otherwise.
And she became this wonderful, marvelous character I have way too much fun writing and now have endless notes about stories for. She comes complete with a full life story and some tragic backstory and redemption quests. So I stopped and asked myself "Why the hell am I not writing about her in general? It doesn't have to be porn."
Siofra has potential as a character in high fantasy in general. There's a severe lack of GLBT protagonists in speculative fiction, let alone even just side characters, and there's too much GLBT fiction focused on gender/sexuality struggles, coming out of the closet, facing bigotry, rape as drama, and all sorts of stuff I'd rather avoid as we get enough of that in real life as is. Siofra doesn't need to do any of that to be a good, successful queer character and if I can just write stories about her adventuring forever, I feel like my life will have been worth it. Be it porn or not porn or comedies or tragedies, she's a good girl, and I feel one that would make a good mark in fantasy should I find a publisher.
All my life I knew I wanted to do something creative. It wasn't until I grew up I realized it was writing. Then writing speculative fiction. Then solidifying the worldbuilding. Then picking a flagship character and what to do with her. Things are only concrete now after this book but it feels so wonderful. There's potential here and like hell am I going to waste it.
So thanks to NaNoWriMo, I now have a character that can lead me into the rest of my life. I couldn't be happier with how Siofra came out and am happy to have her lead us all.
This year's was done in 19 days (with a few days of break here and there) making an average of 2658.5 words per update. Every year it gets easier and faster.
This one though feels the most pivotal out of all of them.
During this time, I worked on developing a character I had original decided to use as a porn heroine to make money with. Her name is Lady Siofra Aine Whelan and she's a fantasy-Irish lass who loves the ladies and shows no shame. She's devoted to her goddess and exists to show everyone a good, fun time. I thought that a well-done lesbian character in porn was rare and it'd be easiest for me to write. However, as I worked on the porn, I began to realize she was becoming far more than someone who was stripping to make me money. I wanted to get to know her better, so I did a novel about her for NaNoWriMo without sex scenes just to see how she would act otherwise.
And she became this wonderful, marvelous character I have way too much fun writing and now have endless notes about stories for. She comes complete with a full life story and some tragic backstory and redemption quests. So I stopped and asked myself "Why the hell am I not writing about her in general? It doesn't have to be porn."
Siofra has potential as a character in high fantasy in general. There's a severe lack of GLBT protagonists in speculative fiction, let alone even just side characters, and there's too much GLBT fiction focused on gender/sexuality struggles, coming out of the closet, facing bigotry, rape as drama, and all sorts of stuff I'd rather avoid as we get enough of that in real life as is. Siofra doesn't need to do any of that to be a good, successful queer character and if I can just write stories about her adventuring forever, I feel like my life will have been worth it. Be it porn or not porn or comedies or tragedies, she's a good girl, and I feel one that would make a good mark in fantasy should I find a publisher.
All my life I knew I wanted to do something creative. It wasn't until I grew up I realized it was writing. Then writing speculative fiction. Then solidifying the worldbuilding. Then picking a flagship character and what to do with her. Things are only concrete now after this book but it feels so wonderful. There's potential here and like hell am I going to waste it.
So thanks to NaNoWriMo, I now have a character that can lead me into the rest of my life. I couldn't be happier with how Siofra came out and am happy to have her lead us all.
